Tales of Payback
by Laryna6
Summary: At Yulia City, Asch confronts the one who stole his life. But who's the real thief here? The one who was left with the other's castoffs and doom or the one who walked off with a brand new name and identity? Will the real Luke fon Fabre please act his age?
1. Don't Get Sad, Get Mad

Disclaimer: I don't own any intellectual property referenced here, including Tales of the Abyss and all associated thingies. Namco and other rightful owners do.

How That Battle Should Have Gone

-

"I'm your replica."

"Now do you get it, dreck?"

"I'm your replica. I'm not Luke fon Fabre. I was created to take your place and die at Akzeriuth after spending seven years cooped up in a mansion bored to braindeath while you got to run around the world being a god-general and working for Master Van."

"…Yes?" This was not going as expected.

"I spent seven years trying to measure up to someone a decade older than me. I spent seven years with everyone looking at me and seeing you. Except for Master Van, who only saw 'foolish replica Luke,' while you got to kick ass and make a name for _yourself _as Asch the Bloody."

"You stole…"

"Shut up. You knew that Natalia loved you and you let her be stuck with someone who didn't remember a single one of all the special moments you two shared. You let Mother cry herself to sleep at night and have nightmares of what happened to her baby that was so horrible that he forgot everything. You let Master Van take me to Akzeriuth and barely made even a token effort to prevent me from being used to destroy a city and _die. _Sure, Jade did the same thing by not telling me I was a replica, but we're talking about you now, _Luke fon Fabre_." The replica's sword left his sheath. "You say I stole your life? Like hell I did! I never wanted it! I got the trash you threw away, like _our mother and Natalia_, and you got to start life as a newborn who could choose who they wanted to be! You're the one that stole _my _life, damn you! You're the one the Score said would destroy Akzeriuth, not me! And you would have done it as a weapon of Kimlasca, I did it because Master Van lied to me and said that it would save everyone's lives! And he did that, my teacher did that, the man I looked up to did that, _for you_!" There were tears in the replica's eyes now, but it didn't detract from the snarl of rage. "I'm not the one that stole your life. You're the one that stole _my_ life, you bastard. And I'm taking it back!"

-

"You know," Guy had to admit, "I kind of have to feel sorry for him."

"Well, you're his manservant now. Again. Pass me the sheath." Asch the Bloody's eyes still glimmered with bloodlust. "And then you might want to think about putting _his _clothes on."

"You know," Guy said thoughtfully, "I think I'll pass."

"You're his manservant. I'm not going to give that bastard any excuse to say I'm taking anything that's_ rightfully _his." The handedness thing would need to be worked out, but otherwise he looked pretty good.

"You know what, I think I'll quit."

"But Guuuy!" Asch whined. "If you quit who's going to haul him back home and kick his ass every time he tries to leave? Please? Just a month? I want _him_ to see what it's like to be stir crazy and trapped with people who think he's someone else!"

Guy looked utterly embarrassed. "Uh, your age is showing."

"Asch the Bloody first appeared seven years ago and his temper tantrums on the battlefield are legendary. Finally! I can be myself! Please, Guy? Make him act his age and stay in the manor until he's twenty because he was an idiot and got himself kidnapped by Van? For me? You know you owe me big."

"What, you want me to stay here while you go to Belkend to check up on those leads you forced out of him?" Seeing his opening, Guy pressed the point. "Besides, he's locked in Tear's house with Natalia and there's no way he can break out. Just let him stay there until we can come back here to pick him up and head to Baticul, okay?"

"Fine." Yeah, on Asch the Bloody the attitude looked natural. You didn't expect noble airs and manners from someone nicknamed 'the Bloody.' You expected someone short-tempered, contemptuous… acting like Asch had acted, huh. "I'll see if Natalia can remind him of his promise so he stops being a traitor and does his duty to his kingdom and family as the firstborn son. Otherwise, he spends that month in _his_ bed, in _his_ home, while they try to find all the shrapnel I'm going to stick in him and find someone to heal over _if he keeps trying to take over my goddamn body_!" Guy didn't hear a response, not that he expected to. "You can fucking live your own life for once and pay for your own damn mistakes!" Asch fumed. "At least I know now that it's the person who doesn't start taking that gets the damn headaches. If he tries to do that to me again I'm doing it to him for five times as long until he stops being a whiny little bitch."

"Wow."

"Wow what?"

"I knew you weren't happy, but don't you think this is a little extreme?"

"What good would getting angry do? I just got called immature. And guess what, I was four! I had a license to be immature! Anyway, it wasn't anyone's fault that I was going through that. Or so I thought. But now I _know _whose fault is and there is going to be vengeance, oh yes there will. Vengeance for seven years in limbo and ten thousand people in Akzeriuth."

"Remind me not to get on your bad side."

"Guy, you're… Guy. I only got angry at you because I didn't have any other targets or you disrespected Master Van. You're always on my good side. You're glued to it."

"Thanks."

"But if you betray me like Van did I'm going to slice important bits off and feed them to you. For starters. Just so you know." Asch smiled, and Guy was never more aware than in that instant that the person who stood before him was a seven-year-old with the power to destroy cities by accident, let alone on a whim, with more than a few screws that not only had never been tightened but people had tried to screw them in the wrong way.

"Uh, yeah, I get the picture."

"Great. Now let's go threaten Teodoro. 'Watchers,' yeah right. More like lazy-asses. They know Van's trying to mess with the Score and they don't think that maybe, just maybe, urgent action is what the Score that St. Bynah won't fall requires? Do they even know the meaning of the word hurry?" Asch stalked off, already feeling cooped up by the most fascinating city on Auldrant.

Guy wished his family luck if they tried to recapture him. Really, he did.

Baticul had been dug out of a crater. Unless this identity changing counted as destroying his old self, the Score that said a miners' city and the light of the sacred flame would be destroyed in the same calamity hadn't happened. Yet.

Guy should probably tell Natalia that, just in case she had any ideas about happy family reunions, huh.


	2. Don't Get Mad, Get Even

Disclaimer: I don't own Tales of the Abyss.

And I thought for sure it was going to be a oneshot, but I got requests for a continuation and all of a sudden the muses showed up in my head yelling in each other's heads. Enjoy. Or not.

-

"_Were you dropped on the head as an infant or something?" _

Luke groaned, bracing himself against a pillar for support. "_You're asking me to summon up a hyperresonance and toss it through the link to you and you think _I'm _the braindead one?"_

"_No, you can't have been dropped on the head at birth, or I would have the same damage. Maybe Van used some kind of poison on your brain cells or something. What do you think we're doing right now?"_

"_You're asking for the impossible and giving me a headache. You want me to throw a hyperresonance at you? Don't tempt me!"_

"_Look, idiot, you _are_ using a hyperresonance on me right now, or vice versa. How in Efreet's name did you think we were talking to each other? Smoke signals from your burnt-out brain cells?" _

While Luke digested this that damn replica, "_Asch, and don't you forget it," _continued. "_With normal artes, if I got hit partway through it would be inconvenient at the most. With destructive hyperresonance, as opposed to what we're doing right now, if someone hit me and disrupted my concentration while I was summoning one it could wreck half of this place. Not that this would be a great loss. So. You summon up the fonons, and you send them to me the same way you're sending seventh fonons encoded with the memories of your thoughts and feelings over to me right now, I destroy that damn fonstone, and you will have been useful for once in your life." _

"_Why are you destroying fonstones?"_

There was a pause. "_Nobody told you?" _

"_If I knew I wouldn't have asked!"_

"_I suppose it's because once a traitor always a traitor and they're just waiting for you to run back to Van"._ A vicious smile was conveyed along with the words.

"_Go fuck yourself!"_

"_That wouldn't be anatomically possible unless I used you as a substitute, and I have other ways of fucking you over." _Getting back to business, "_The Score is written in the seven fonstones Yulia made Lorelei create and Lorelei's manifestation in the core, not every seventh fonon on the planet. A lot of people are siding with Van because they hate the score. The god-generals are hardcore, but a lot of them are jumping at the idea of destroying the score without killing every living person on Auldrant except for me, Ion, Sync, and the other replicas, _including them_. Not to mention that this stone describes Kimlasca conquering Malkuth in the war you were supposed to start, massacring everybody, letting the bodies lie there and rot, and a plague starting that would wipe out all life on Auldrant. Everyone agrees_ that's_ got to go, except for Mohs and his fanatics. I hope Anise took my advice and slit her wrists, because otherwise she'd going to be spending a very, very long time dying."_

"_Anise?"_

"_She handed Ion over to Mohs, who forced him to read the Score on this stone. He would have died if I hadn't glued his fonons back together. I overdid it, he's so stuffed with the fonon that he's walking around now and just touching people and they come back to life or stop bleeding or whatever. I think he's not taking this very well, but slapping him isn't working right now, he doesn't even notice it, same with swords, and I can't take the time to see if the giggling is hysterics or I messed something up while I've got Oracle Knights to butcher. Look, will you hurry up and just toss me the damn hyperresonance? I can't use overlimit and do this at the same time and the idiots are trying to surround me, which is just asking for a radiant howl." _

"_I can't focus when I've got a headache like this." _It galled him to admit it. Damn it, what was he missing cooped up here!

"_How long do you need?" _

"_I don't know." _

"_Didn't Van train you in how to do this?" _

"_How to control it, and how to make large explosions, but how large an area are you talking about, just for starters?"_

Asch let Luke see through his eyes for a few seconds, or forced him to.

"_Holy! There are hundreds of them!"_

"_I know, idiot, I'm the one killing them. Mostly they're either stuck on the other side of that gorge or guarding that fonstone, making a nice big target if you would hurry up!"_

"…_give me a couple of minutes." _Luke paused. He didn't care about the damn replica, but those odds? Natalia was there! _"Are you going to be okay?"_

He snorted. _"Worst comes to worst I blind-jump out of here and end up at one of the Sephiroth until I hit the right one. But it will be a pain for Noelle to come find us at Tataroo Valley since jumping still knocks me out for awhile and I want that fonstone _gone_. I only caught the end of what Mohs forced Ion to read for him but this? Is urgent. If I retreat now they'll have a chance to really fortify this place." _

"…"

"_Look, ask your father or Ingobert, they've been getting reports from Natalia. She's also been sending you letters. Haven't you gotten any?" _

"_I haven't heard a thing from the outside world since you brought me back here after you had Ginji take me to the Radiation Gate." _While the replica had been fighting Van at the Absorption Gate. Luke still didn't have any idea what Asch had hijacked his body to do to the Radiation Gate: no one had told him what was going on.

"_Natalia's going to be really pissed off. She's been writing you… Sheesh, every day, but she sends off a letter weekly." _

It was good to know that at least she hadn't forgotten him. _"What did she think when she didn't get anything in return?"_

"_That you were being a sulky bastard, as usual. Look, I'll let her know about this when the fight's over. I'll contact you again in two minutes, have it ready by then. They're trying to replace the bridges." _

The contact ended and Luke panted for breath.

"Are you alright, Master Luke?" Old Pere had been here watching him?

"I'll be fine. It was him, not Lorelei." He managed to stand upright, tying to get his head to clear. The replica made recovery look so easy! But then, that had been a much longer conversation than usual. "He wants me to try sending him a hyperresonance, right away. They're in a fight. I swear I won't use it on a wall again." He'd been a little cabin feverish, and he'd ended up making Mother cry and getting what rights (privileges) he had even more restricted. He was beginning to understand why the replica was so pissed off about being stuck here and wouldn't go higher up in Baticul than the Coliseum, proper respect for Uncle be damned.

"I suppose, if he needs it. Where are they?" That was a test.

"Daath, somewhere underground. There's a fonstone he wants to destroy." Even the gardener knew more about what was going on than he did. Wonderful.

"Alright, I'll keep anyone from interfering, Master Luke."

Luke took a deep breath and concentrated. In retrospect, it was stupid to think of hyperresonance as a purely destructive force. The seventh fonon was used almost entirely for healing and support artes, for crying out loud! But Asch wanted precision destruction, and _that _Van had taught Luke how to do. He was more than a bit rusty because he wasn't allowed near a weapon, let alone permitted to use fonic artes, even, but he'd been drilled on this until he was about to fall over until Van had given up on having him use it in battle.

Even the replica couldn't manage that, it seemed.

His pride made him do a good job of it, and the fact that blind jumping didn't sound safe and _Natalia _was there.

"_Have you got it ready?"_

"_Here." _

Luke was pulled along to see the fonstone disappear and the Oracle Knights cry out. "_See? Easy." _Asch proceeded to charge into a clump and use that radiant howl mystic arte of his_. "Do you want to talk to Natalia?"_

"_What?" _

"_Do. You. Want. To. Talk. To. Natalia." _

"_I heard you the first time."_

"_Sorry. I used to try very hard not to listen to Lorelei, since I thought I was hearing voices that didn't actually exist, and he doesn't speak very loudly. I though you didn't hear me." _

"_Well I did," _Luke answered, somewhat mollified. _"Do you mean that?" _

"_Talking through people isn't that hard. I got the idea from Lorelei doing it to Tear. I mean, I've been using this to talk to Tear and Natalia…"_

"_Tear and Natalia?" _The dreck had gotten good at fighting. Good enough he could probably beat the out of practice Luke as fast as he had at Yulia City_ without_ fighting like a madman. _"And what's this about Lorelei?" _

"_They're the people who normally toss them to me, but we all ran in here at once because we had to save Ion and we had an ambush of Oracle Knights chasing us."_

"_They send you hyperresonances?"_

"_Sure. A hyperresonance, for everyone but us, is two seventh fonists. Tear and Natalia are two seventh fonists. Do the math." _Asch finally sheathed his sword: they'd gotten rid of all the ones here. _"Man, you're out of date. Do you want to talk to Natalia or not? Because I don't like owing you a favor." _

"…_Yes." _

"_Great. Give us a couple minutes to clear out of here and then contact me: we're going to have to teleport out of here and I need time if I'm actually going to aim." _That meant that Asch would be the one stuck with the headache: the replicawas very serious about his honor code. It came from being betrayed, and Anise defecting to Mohs wouldn't help. _"I'll let you have control of my body, within reason, for awhile." _

"_Thank you." _He didn't like having to thank the replica, but under the circumstances thanks were owed.

"_Don't mention it. Please, don't. I wouldn't want to give Natalia and Tear the mistaken impression that I've started to regard you as worth acknowledging the existence of." _

"_And vice versa." _


	3. Crime and Punishment

Disclaimer: I don't own Tales of the Abyss.

And it breeds! Resolution of Anise's situation was wanted by the characters. Also, once a member of an organization sells even a tiny piece of information they can end up far more motivated by what their own organization can do to them then future money, and trapped into more and more traitorous actions.

One of the many things one learns from Tom Clancy… I hope _The Teeth of the Tiger_ was ghostwritten (although I hear from my parents he's gone senile and said things at a speech they were at fairly recently that the Tom Clancy I enjoyed reading would not have), because it contradicts the principles laid out in his previous books for the sake of exciting plot, which is why I don't read the spin-off series by other authors. The book says that Jack Ryan did something his self throughout his life and _as of the most recent book_ would have not tolerated anyone doing in a million years in setting up a certain organization. That's pod person level OOCness.

Although I didn't think I would like his stuff the amount of worldbuilding detail he puts in is amazing. On the level of David Weber's Honor Herrington series, and the thing is it's mostly real. For instance, his detailed description of how a terrorist organization could produce a nuke in _The Sum of All Fears_ was deliberately inaccurate, although he noted in the end notes that he didn't think the inaccuracy would do any good because it's just that easy to find out the right way to do it and he did keep the difficulty level equivalent. It's fascinating and his work, _Red Storm_ _Rising _in particular (not a Jack Ryan novel but a theoretical _realistic_ WWIII scenario, as in no random button-pressing ending it all copout of the sort people who think US vs. USSR WWIII equals nukes instead of tanks wrote) should be on any worldbuilder's/writer's reading list for a look at how the 'spy game'/intelligence/figuring out what the hell is going on and what to do about it level of politics works and the sheer impact of the human element and Murphy's Law on what goes on around us.

-

"Ion, you're my friend and I love you dearly, but get the fuck out of my way."

"No." Ion refused to move, shielding Anise with his body and staring down Asch.

"Ion, she reported on our progress to Mohs. We're easily three weeks behind schedule because of her, General Cecille and a lot of good people are dead because of her, and don't you dare say that her parents' debts excuse her actions. Mohs is a traitor to the world and thus all money owed him has been null and void for months now. Not to mention that if she had gone to you, to me, to Jade over there, to Natalia, those debts could have been paid off. We're representing countries here and you could have paid that out of your allowance, for crying out loud! Instead, she chose to pay with your life and the lives of who knows how many hundreds of people, and by keeping silent she was the one who put her parents at risk in the first place. Now, get out of my way." Asch had already drawn his sword and also refused to back down.

"No."

"Ion, just do what he says!" Anise gasped out, holding a hand to her stomach wound as she lay curled up around the pain on the ground.

"No!"

"Ion, I applaud your loyalty, but it is as misplaced as mine to Van was."

"Don't…"

"Yes! I am comparing her to Van!" Asch snarled and Ion drew back a bit, afraid but still not moving from between Asch and his target. He sighed. "I'm not going to hurt you, Ion. But I'm not going to let you be hurt again either. Guy, grab him and drag him out of here."

"Asch, I gave you my sword. I'll do it if you tell me again, you know that, but part of being loyal is arguing when I think someone is making a mistake. Look at her, Asch. She can't fight anymore. She _turned herself in_. It's not a death in combat right now: it's murder. If you want justice, then take her to Yulia City and you _know_ they will give her a fair trial. If it's just vengeance, Asch, I don't want to watch you do this to yourself." Asch let Guy put his hand on his shoulder: that was a good sign. "If you're going to execute people for going in planning to betray people for the sake of family, you're going to have to include me in that someday. I was a plant too, Luke. Asch, sorry."

Asch's resolve faded when confronted with that. "Yes, but you told me about it. You refused Van. No one nearly died because of you, Guy."

"But the information I gave him was probably a big help in kidnapping Luke. Think about it, Asch. If she was all that loyal to Mohs, how would Ion have escaped to Grand Chokmah to help make the peace treaty in the first place? It was the God-generals who found out first, not Mohs. She's just a kid, Asch. Her first loyalty is to her parents. That's the way it is for most people. I believe her when she said she gave Mohs as much disinformation as she could get away with. If she were loyal to him, he wouldn't have had to kidnap her parents."

When Asch was silent, Guy pressed the point. "If it came down to Kimlasca or us, who would you choose?"

"You."

"But you swore oaths to Kimlasca."

"Under a name that wasn't mine. They're Luke's oaths, and I _told _Ingobert that I don't consider myself bound by them. I'm not lying, Guy. I'm not selling anyone out."

"I know you wouldn't, Asch. But the world is complicated. People screw up. If she'd gone to us with the truth, I would bet you a thousand gald Mohs told her he would kill her parents even before he kidnapped them. Sometimes, Asch, you're in a situation where you have two loyalties and you can't just discard one." Guy lowered his hand to where Asch gripped his sword. "You're probably going to find yourself in that position someday, Asch. And I don't want you thinking that the only way to deal with it is to kill yourself afterwards."

"I wouldn't. If anyone tried to put me in that position I would kill them. I won't betray anyone, Guy. I know what it's like to be betrayed. I won't do that to anyone."

"Asch, isn't the entire point of this to prevent people from predicting the future? Let Natalia heal Anise. We can take her to Yulia City, she can have a fair trial, and if they execute her then they execute her. But you're not a judge, jury, and executioner, Asch, regardless of what Luke got up to at Van's orders while he was using this identity. You're better than that, Asch."

"Damn it!" Asch dropped his sword, letting Guy catch it. "Keep her out of my sight." He wheeled away and stalked off.

Natalia started casting cure as soon as he was out the door.

"I'm impressed, Guy. I didn't think you would be able to pull that off." Jade hadn't even tried, Anise's closest comrade in the group or no. He was on rather thin ice for holding back vital information that could have prevented Akzeriuth's destruction and had been informed that if he irritated Asch one more time he would be left behind wherever they were to find his own way back to Grand Chokmah and Guy would just have to be Emperor Peony's only representative.

"I didn't think I could either." Guy leaned the sword (the legendary Key of Lorelei) against the wall, almost collapsing with relief. "He doesn't understand family loyalty, not at all. The person he has the most family-like feelings for is Van, and Van's asked him to join him a few times now and betray the world, and you know how Asch gets when he does that. Anise, you shouldn't have turned yourself in to him. That was asking for it, and you knew it."

"It's actually rather reassuring, in that situation. I can certainly see why Van went to such lengths to secure Luke. If either one were on his side he could have dropped the outer lands into the miasma in a day, between hyperresonance's destructive potential and the ability to teleport. And, in fact, I think Anise _was _asking for it." Jade looked at her in concerned speculation. "Anise, where are your parents?"

When she was done coughing up the blood Natalia's arte had forced out of her lungs (healing artes never worked quite right on wounds Asch inflicted: they thought he was doing something to his swords that he wasn't going to share until he'd perfected it. Asch liked having tricks not even they knew about.), she told him. "I failed, so that bastard Mohs killed them anyway."

"And you wanted Asch to either kill you or let you join us again so that you could avenge them?" Ion wiped the mess away with a piece torn off of his own robes. "Anise, I don't want to lose you. Your parents were my family too. I'm not angry with you, you know that."

"You nearly died because of me, Ion!"

"But I'm alive, Anise, and I wouldn't be angry with you even if I had." He embraced her. "I'm a replica too, so I don't really understand family either, but you always protected me. I love you, Anise."

"Ion…" That just made it worse. He'd loved her, he'd trusted her, and she'd used that against him.

"He's not going to be able to forgive you, Anise," Natalia told her gently. "If he was going to start forgiving people… I think part of him still wants his Master Van back, and he can't afford to forgive him, for the world's sake. His heart would forgive him before he would forgive you, and so he can't forgive either of you. It's not that he hates you, Anise, it's just the opposite that makes him so angry. If you travel with us… It wouldn't be safe."

"Then what am I supposed to do?!"

"Whatever you do, Anise, I'll come with you," Ion promised her. With his usual smile, he told her that, "So you can probably come with us, since Asch wouldn't let me be with you without him there to keep an eye on you."

"Unless they execute her," Jade pointed out. "Minor or no, that's a very real possibility. And fon master guardians are legally adults. Every single precedent related to the position…"

"Traitorous fon master guardians are nailed to the ground someplace the lava rises and falls over in Mt. Zaleho and cooked to death. I'm a fon master guardian, Jade, I know the penalties. That was… that was part of what Mohs used. Once I sold him just a bit of information, if he'd let people know I had… And then what would have happened to my parents?" Anise coughed again and kept coughing until Tear, who had been silent this whole time, cast first aid. When she caught her breath she finally met their eyes. "He could have said they were in on it. So… in for a gald, in for a bag of them. I'm hoping I can maybe get the execution delayed until Mohs is dead by my hand, but I'm never going to get to be a bride."


	4. Remind me why I'm saving these people

_And another little piece, about a minor character that I just really like for some reason. And random baby Ion replicas, because they are made of cute. _

_This fic is meant to be humor/angst, and I very much went flat-out on the angst in the last chapter. Also, while game!Luke ends up running around trying to please everyone and get their permission and so on, fic!Asch does not care about making other people happy but does need a support network. A lot of what ends up saving the world is the research of Sheridan and Belkend. Power isn't much use if you don't know where to aim it. This Asch's goal is Van's death, but Van knows better than to go up against the complete Key of Lorelei with no Mohs or miasma as distractions, no backup since Asch has been killing them all..._

_Save the world, yes, since Asch wants to live and if the world goes so does he, but he has no reason whatsoever to like the world. The problem is that he has a lot of power and the world likes power. Game!Luke angsts about whether or not he should be worthy to live because he's a replica and a murderer. This Asch has put the blame for Akzeriuth in the right place, on Van and on the people who knowingly worked to bring Akzeriuth about and kill him, but consider that being used to destroy an innocent land is_ what caused Van to do all this in the first place_._

_Akzeriuth was destroyed: what right do I have to exist vs. Akzeriuth was destroyed: what right do the people responsible have to exist?_

-

Noelle landed the Albiore on the landing pad Asch had carved out of the rock near the entrance to the Tataroo Valley sephiroth. She slung her item bag over her shoulder and stepped out: she'd go find some flunkies to help her carry the boxes that held the rest of the supplies. As she keyed the elevator she idly listened to it to check that it was in good working order.

In thanks for the rescue of the replicas of the victims of the attack Van had made on Sheridan in retaliation for the city's help creating the seal that restricted the core's vibration a few of their engineers had been making improvements to this place. Actually, their gratitude was being a little exaggerated because, come on, they got to muck around in a sephiroth with someone who knew how it worked, even if his answer to any questions that didn't matter to the fate of Auldrant was generally "figure it out yourself," which they had no problem whatsoever with having fun doing.

Frankly, if it weren't for the Albiore she might be wandering around here like a kid in a candy store too.

"Hey, Noelle!" One of her cousins ran up with a clipboard, waving at her.

"Hey, Damon. Do you know where Asch is?" She shook the bag. "I've got secure documents to give to him personally."

"The bell hasn't rung," they had one rigged up to a hyperresonance detector, although you had to go ask the operator if it was the something going boom somewhere type or the 'the boss is in/out/went from Grand Chokmah to Belkend' type. It got turned off during construction work. "I think I saw one of the ducklings going that way. Have you got the cargo manifest?"

"Yeah." She handed it over. "Mind unloading it for me?"

Damon paged through it. "Finally, the deprogrammers've been asking for those components for a week!" A lot of Van's creations were 'programmed' into mindless soldiers and that programming had to be removed so that they could have personalities. "Sure, I'm stuck with that right now. I'll go round up some of the kids."

"Great, thanks. Nice talking to you." Young replicas, with just the basic walking/talking/clothing/etc. programming weren't up to dealing with people right away. They were also insatiably curious. Fontechies loved people who would listen to them talk about fontech and understood how cool it was. Replicas loved people who would explain things to them and treat them like people. Also, one's students were one's family. Sheridan's population had almost doubled from taking in so many of the replicas that Van's forces managed to create before Asch came in and shut them down. At this rate they were going to have to open up the irrigation project again (they had the desalination capacity for it), so this trip had involved flying over some consultants from Engave.

"It's good to see you and it will be really good to see those Mark 23s."

Besides Fon Master Ion and the ones that had led up to him like Sync, Mohs had made about a dozen more replicas of the former fon master as part of some plan recently before Asch had tracked him down. They'd been made a few at a time in different locations, because everyone knew by now that large-scale fomicry stuck out like a sore thumb and was just asking to have Asch come down on you like the Sword of Lorelei he actually was. They had individual names, colors, and haircuts, but they were generally referred to as the ducklings because they tended to follow Asch around and had an uncanny ability to tell where he was. When asked about it they said they just knew and Asch said it was a potential fon master thing: one of the prerequisites was being very sensitive to the seventh fonon and Asch was an isofon of Lorelei and, as a replica, made of the fonon.

Since they were modern replicas, made as part of Mohs and Van's alliance, they were more stable than Fon Master Ion and could create hyperresonances in pairs even better than normal seventh fonists, although they generally would only if someone really needed to talk to Asch while he was away. Last time she was here Asch had been lecturing Capel and Rube about not trying to use hyperresonance's matter conversion to turn their pillows into marshmallows. They'd ended up setting fire to them.

Asch tended to be really, really cranky if disturbed when he was working on something important, so generally people would ask the ducklings to see if he was free and in a good mood. This service often involved payment in strawberries.

"Hi, Noelle!" And speak of the imp: one of them ran up, a couple of strawberries in hand.

"Hi, um…" He was wearing blue but he had an orange cloth over his hair? "You guys are trying to confuse people again, aren't you?"

He nodded, snickering. Noelle put her hands on her hips. "I know it's funny to you, but you hate it when people treat you like things, right?"

He blinked, and nodded.

"And if you don't remember someone's name, sometimes that means you're just bad with names, but sometimes it means that you don't care about the person. Everyone here cares about you guys, so we don't want to treat you like things. But, if we can't tell who you are, then we can't call you by name, and we feel like we're treating you like ducklings instead of people. _You _may think it's a fun game, but it makes us feel like we're hurting your feelings, and good people don't like hurting other people's feelings. You know how Asch feels about being called Luke, right?"

Oh yes, the ducklings knew.

"We worry that we're making you feel that way when we call you, oh, Tam and you're actually Lilseica."

"Sorry. Um, I'm Rube?"

"I should have guessed." She removed the cloth and ruffled his hair. "What's Asch up to?"

"Having lunch and trying to talk to Lorelei. Van's keeping Lorelei asleep, so it's not working, but it's giving Van a headache anyway so he's having fun."

"Would he mind if I headed over? I've got some papers for him."

"Oh, those? He was grumbling about where you were. He said you should have been here yesterday."

"I had to make a side trip." She shrugged. "Where is he?"

"Um…" New replicas often weren't good at giving people directions, although the ducklings rarely got lost. "I have to go tell some people things. One of them's Guy, and Asch wants to see him, so maybe he can lead you?"

"Sure, that works."

Rube took off. "Hey, don't run ahead, I'm back here and I have bags to carry."

"Uh, sorry."

Guy was adjusting one of the devices for measuring the core's vibrations via the sephiroth when they found him. "Hey Noelle."

"Hi, Guy." He was hot and he loved fontech, but he wasn't likely to get over that phobia anytime soon so it was 'look but don't touch,' sadly. "I've got some papers for Asch."

"And Asch says that he wants to see you right away, because a lot of people want stuff from Din's."

"Sure. Thanks, Rube."

"You're welcome." Rube looked at Noelle.

"What will it be?" The replicas were not slave labor. Anyone who ordered them around like minions would be kicked out, literally if they did it in front of Asch. They were going to be out in the real world someday and that meant learning about jobs and money, or monetary equivalents like strawberries.

"I can't eat any more strawberries today or I'll get sick to my stomach again, Dr. Shu says. You can have these and I want a hug, please."

If her mom didn't already have three replicas running around the place she'd be trying to abduct this one, seriously. Sadly, none of the ducklings were up for adoption quite yet. A lot of them had been traumatized and they'd all imprinted on Asch like, well, ducklings. "Sure." She gave him a hug, then another hug. "You did a good job, so I'll give you a tip."

"Thanks, Noelle! Bye!"

"Bye." She waved as he ran off to the next person.

"Those kids are way too cute." Guy finished up and reattached the cover. "They're even mellowing Asch out, and that's saying something. I think he doesn't want to scare them by going all 'Rar, I am the Scion of Lorelei and you will do what I say or kiss your house goodbye' while they're there."

"I think of it as the glare of doom."

"It's not just a glare. People will react to it even if they don't know he's there before he does it. The seventh fonon includes memory particles, so I think he might be broadcasting it or something when he gets really irritated." Guy sighed. "Usually it's genuine, and it's good to have warning when his usual bad mood when dealing with people he's not fond of is about to start getting serious, but he did it on purpose to get Peony to sit down and shut up one time. Mind you, Peony was attempting to get all of us into weird outfits and wouldn't talk business until we gave in while we were in a major hurry, but still." As Asch's semi-official conscience Guy saw him deliberately using his powers to mess with people's heads as a very bad sign. "Well, come on, he's in one of the galleries we unsealed last week because we started to run low on space again."

"How many people have you got here?"

"At this rate we're going to end up a town, I think. We're right near Chesedonia, there's decent farmland nearby now that the monsters are cleared out, this is the only Sephiroth that's easy to get into besides Shurrey Hill… Asch picked this place for lots of good reasons. We're thinking of setting up an official town council because we've got stuff to do and Asch likes being in control of what's going on around him but he doesn't like forty people showing up at once asking questions he already gave other people answers to when he just got back from searching around Mt. Roneal."

"Ouch."

"Tell me about it. Who do you think they got dumped on?"

When they made it to the gallery Asch was sitting on a bedroll with a half-eaten slice of cake next to him. The rest of the cake was being demolished by a few of the ducklings and Princess Natalia, who brightened when she saw Noelle.

"Yes, I come bearing letters." She dug in the pack and handed them over to her.

"Thank you, Noelle."

"All part of the service. Asch?"

He opened his eyes. "You're a day late."

"I had to run by Engave to do some extra shopping for Sheridan and pick up some consultants. Since we're taking in so many replicas we're having to grow more of our own food. It's partly your fault for making peace break out. We've got less demand for weapons and more fun toys to play with." Now that Asch had bought the Albiore II and her services for the next three years from Sheridan for the price of four of the flightstones he'd found in the storage space of one of the sephiroth there was a bidding war going on between Kimlasca, Malkuth, and Chesedonia's merchant prince over the future Albiores, but the world economy was a little messed up right now and future earnings didn't buy food now.

"You should have cleared that with me in advance." No, he was not fine with this. "Noelle, there' s a difference between volunteer and employee. I like you, you're a good pilot, but I also like _knowing what I need to know to save Auldrant_." He held out his hand, beckoning for the papers she should have delivered yesterday, and she scrambled to get them out and hand them over. He glanced through them and put them down by his side. "Noelle, I understand when things come up. I had no problem when you found out about that ferry wreck and helped look for survivors. But if you make another non-emergency sidetrip on my time that could have waited until you had my permission to do it then I will expect that flightstone back and you will train me a replacement as per the contract. Understood?"

"I gotcha." Her eyes drifted to where one of his hands had formed a fist, gripping the fabric of the bedroll. Yeah, Guy was right. If it weren't for the audience she would be quaking in her boots right about now. Better change the subject. "Where's Tear?"

"With Ion, Jade, and that girl in what's left of Daath. They're holding the war crimes trials of Mohs' supporters and the Fon Master has to preside over them. Most of them will get amnesty, but there's a high chance of assassins. As soon as your cargo is unloaded and you're given the new routing you will be taking off, so I suggest you start getting ready. That counted as your days off for the next two weeks. The mail is in that pile over there." He waved at it. "And take anything you have on you addressed to Jade straight to him. If you'd gotten here yesterday he could have gone over them with me, but as it is you're going to have to swing by Daath again to pick up his reviews."

"Gotcha."

He just grunted.

"What's wrong, Luke?" Natalia looked up from a letter at the sound.

"There are too many people here, they all want stuff from me, and that bastard Van is hiding out in the core and won't come out. I can't fight him there, that's Lorelei's home ground and that bitch Yulia's pact means that Lorelei has to help protect him. If I could get close to him I could break Lorelei free from that, but the core is fucking huge. I'm not doing this to save the world, I'm doing it to kill that bastard and I just know he's…" On that word Noelle flinched back as she heard the cloth tear in Asch's grip. The ducklings had assorted reactions: one of the ones that must have been in the last group to be rescued judging from their mostly blank face (they didn't know how to display emotions yet) actually dived for cover behind Natalia. "I'm sorry." He took a deep breath.

"Yeah, it's rough on you," Guy agreed. "I can't wait until this is over."

"It's not just that. I wanted a base camp, you know, someplace to stow Ion and then some of the new replicas where I could make sure they would be safe, and some help researching the core, and the next thing I know there are two thousand people here! And I have to spend more and more time here because they can't find their asses with both hands and a map! I'm not even eight yet and I've got an enemy to kill and an isofon to free from the bastard and the core, and then I have to figure out what we're going to do without Lorelei in the core so the miasma doesn't come back and I don't have time for these people! The replicas and the Sheridaners, fine, but I've got people who see me as another manifestation of the aggregate sentience of the seventh fonon, and I might technically be one since I'm pure seventh fonon and Lorelei's isofon, sure, but I'm not an idiot like Lorelei. Would you believe some people wanted me to predict the future for them when I wandered out there to wait for Noelle yesterday?"

"Would those be the ones who ended up in the middle of the Zao Desert?" Natalia smiled. "Oh, that explains that."

"Not going to blame you there," Guy agreed. "Last thing anyone sane wants is another Score."

"Van's right, you know, about a lot of things. And one of them is that people like that are going to keep coming after me, because people want a quick and easy road to prosperity and people want to control other people. Frankly, I don't bother talking to people who aren't at least latent seventh fonists, like you Guy since you can use center, anymore._ I'd_ be happier living in a replica world, for one."

He grumbled under his breath. "I manage to talk to Lorelei and I ask what the hell do you mean by calling me a fragment of your soul and… I go to all this trouble to find my own identity and I'm a manifestation of the freaking mass mind of the _fucking_ seventh fonon. I hate my life."

The baby duckling (Noelle didn't know his name) crept forward and gave him a tentative hug, trying to guess what the right thing to do to make him feel better was. Asch sighed and hugged him back. "If it weren't for these guys I would ditch this place, I swear. I'm not even eight yet. I don't want to be responsible for a damn boom town." But he wasn't going to leave the ducklings behind and it was best for them to stay here. "Van dies. Lorelei goes back to the fon belt to blend in with the rest of the fonon like he wants. I go to all that trouble to get an individual identity and he wants to ditch his. I don't get him, I am not him!"

"No, you're not," Guy stated calmly, and Asch turned away, grumbling a bit more but Noelle could tell that the storm had been averted.

"You know what?" Asch said finally. "Screw it. We can't do anything until someone thinks of something or Van sticks his neck out. I say we make whoever's on rotation right now acting mayor and go home." Then he seemed to realize what he'd said. "I mean, to your home, Natalia. You're pining for that jerk, it's driving me up the wall, and… your aunt is just as much my mother as she is his. I wasn't, you know, but I'm not going to throw her away like he did." When he met their eyes again the vulnerability his tone had hinted at was gone. "If daddy-dearest or uncle shows their faces in front of me, though, I'm making good on that threat to knock teeth out, minimum. Send me to die, will they…"


	5. It's Called Karma

And yet another piece, centered around the big worrisome thing in the game that is the Big Bang effect.

Also, cancer is named what it is because the victims described the pain as being like a crab inside them trying to claw its way out: Cancer means crab, as in the zodiac sign. A form of cancer with multiple growths could very well merit a name derived from 'the death of a thousand cuts,' and Luke's mother's health condition both being one that healing arts are useless against and something that requires extract from the relative of a highly poisonous mushroom (or perhaps they're both deadly, and the non-greater death cap simply has a weaker form that can be used as medicine in small doses), fits cancer very well.

I've made it something that gets passed on via the X chromosome in this, and one of the reasons given for why women are a lot more resistant to a lot of various health hazards than men is that we have two copies of the thing, which contains a lot of very important stuff.

Humans have two copies of every other chromosome all the time, and often if the version of a gene from one parent has a problem with then they suppress that gene and it's the other version that gets 'expressed.' One of the reasons the nature vs. nurture debate in psychology is on crack is that nurture can actually effect what genes get expressed, so even the most diehard 'it's all the genes' person has to admit if they've got any intellectual honesty that nurture plays a role. The fact that identical twins who grow up in different environments without meeting each other and having to distance themselves from the other person end up with extremely, extremely similar personalities when you'd think that if nurture was all that mattered growing up in different environments would cause them to be _less _alike than normal twins is proof that genes do matter.

In short: both play a role, each effects the other: get over it. It's worse than the chicken or the egg debate. Jade notes that Luke and Asch are similar despite different histories: it's more like they're similar because of them.

In any case, without a backup copy if a man inherits something deadly on the X chromosome they're screwed.

And the official length of Auldrant's year is 765 days. Here I have a reason why Jade doesn't look like he's in his sixties.

And I swear, I should just go ahead and label this thing incomplete.

-

"Are you okay?" Asch didn't like being concerned about Luke, but this was concerning.

"Do I," Luke panted, "Look okay?" If it weren't for the tree he was braced against he would have fallen over, in fact.

"I heard that you weren't getting a lot of exercise but it's not like we walked that far." It couldn't be more than five miles, in fact. Although Asch admitted that he had a warped idea of what constituted a lot of exercise, since he hadn't had much to do at the manor but train into exhaustion to burn off his desire to escape. Then after his escape he'd usually been walking or fighting from sunrise to sunset except for breaks to cook meals for quite awhile.

And Luke had a lot of extra years to build up muscle in, and it wasn't like he hadn't gotten a lot of exercise as Van's Special Operations commander/Black Ops assassin.

"I've been getting steadily weaker for awhile now. I asked for a medical examination and my stats have decreased twenty percent, easily, between my last exam at the Oracle Knights and two months ago."

"And you haven't told Natalia and Mother because you don't want them to worry." Asch didn't like that this meant he was going to have to be the one to worry, since he worried about Natalia and Mother even if not Luke. "Is it what Mother has?"

"The test for that is rather elaborate, and I had only asked for a checkup. The doctor didn't know that my stats should be higher." Luke had started out very, very powerful, after all. "If it is what Mother has, then I'm a dead man walking." Her condition was passed down through the female line. Women who inherited it would sometimes have no symptoms for their entire lives, and even if they did then it would show up later in life and in a weaker form. "One of our distant relatives died of that before you were created. The usual age of onset in men is thirteen, but it might just have taken this long to show up because of how strong I am, the power we possess…"

Luke shrugged helplessly. "They did everything they could for him, but Rugnican death cap extract is in fact deadly poisonous above a certain dosage level and… That's why Mother has to rest so much. It weakens her body not to exercise but the less food she needs to eat the more effective the medicine is. It simply isn't possible to give a young man a dose high enough to do any good without it poisoning their stomach, and a panacea bottle to get rid of that damage would also remove the medicine, making the exercise pointless."

Asch tilted his head, examining Luke's body while ignoring his explanation. "It doesn't look like Thousand Knives disease, but if it's at a low enough level I can't sense a thing even though it's still there. I tried pruning the growths back, and it did some good, but I checked a month later and there were dozens of new ones."

"That's why the medicine has to be a poison, to keep killing the growths," Luke agreed. "Healing spells simply make things worse, since they actually strengthen the growths."

Asch nodded. "They're growing so… forcefully that they suck up seventh fonons more than the rest of the body, that's what I used to figure out how to detect them in Mother." He shook his head. "But you're…" He held up one of his arms and then looked back and forth from it to Luke, then shook his head. "It's the opposite. Everyone's body is healing itself constantly, even if there aren't any actual injuries. Yours is doing it less than mine, and I think we should be identical. Probably. Actually, since I'm a replica… I think I should be doing it less than you, since I'm made of seventh fonons anyway and should be a lot less stable than you are."

Asch stepped back a bit and started to cast. "Oh radiant power: Bless!"

Luke would have yelled at him about asking permission before casting random artes on people, but Asch's expression the instant he opened his eyes and got a good look at Luke stopped him. "How bad is it?"

"Bad. That arte is a little like one of Natalia's that recovers a bit of HP for a person every so often, only what this one does is sort of envelop someone in seventh fonons and then heal them as needed until it's all used up. I cast it so that I could see what your body did with those fonons, like I used it on Mother while I was trying to figure out if there was anything I could do, and your body is…"

It clearly didn't make any sense. "You're at full HP, but you're still exhausted, and it's… your body is _adding to the cloud_. It's giving off the fonons it should be using to keep your body's strength the same and I didn't catch that because I was only looking at what you used, not what you radiated. This happens to poorly-made replicas since their fonons aren't tied down strongly enough and they try to return to the fon belt, and also to Ion right after he uses Daathic fonic artes, but you're an original. Why would your body memory be so weak?"

"Body memory?"

"What replica data extraction takes to make the replica. Genetic code tells the body how it should be, body memory tells the seventh fonons. Replicas have genes that are copies of their originals', but that's just because they remember having them. They can carry out the motions but body memory is what makes us look the way we do, what keeps us going. Genes only really control the first through sixth fonons that make up original people. Apparently, a long time ago, Ispania was trying to figure out how to produce seventh fonists and as part of that they caused a human to be born without any body memory. They aged almost twice as fast as everyone else does, they had only one HP… That's why Sync's victims died so fast, he was taking away a huge amount of their body memory and after that they could be killed by… a few hours of miasma exposure, in extreme cases."

"Sync's victims? Never mind." That must have gone on while his father wasn't giving him his mail. Natalia really had… She'd thought he wasn't bothering to answer and she'd still kept writing… He was reading them all, but they brought back memories and the knowledge of what he'd done to her and… He'd get caught up by the end of the month, he promised himself.

"If it's extraction damage, though, why now?" Asch blinked. "Akzeriuth. I think this is my fault."

"It would be." Or his creation's fault.

"According to Dist's research perfect isofons are connected. The original steals power from the replica, which is part of why replicas are weaker than originals normally, and if the original starts to die despite this then they'll grow weaker as they start to transfer their fonons over and hijack the replica's body. It's called the Big Bang effect, there are five confirmed cases including the cheagle. It's being kept very, very top secret since even though it won't do anything about aging imagine the temptation for nobles who have to worry about assassination or deaths in battle that the idea of having a backup body would pose."

Luke stared.

"Yeah. That was why Emperor Peony's father started the research on Hod. Not to mention that replicas can be programmed into perfect soldiers with no hesitation to throw their life away, able to fight the day they're made…" Asch snarled, bearing his teeth, and then forcibly calmed himself. "Jade was worried that if you knew about the effect you might kill yourself to take over my body and kill me, or Van might have you killed to accomplish the same thing. I mean, you were planning to let me die at Akzeriuth so that you could live from the beginning, so why not? You're still confined to the manor except when we're here because there have actually been several attempts on your life."

Yet more things no one had trusted Luke with: neither the possibility that he could escape and kill Asch, two birds with one stone, nor that Van was attempting to rescue and/or kill him.

"I eventually figured out how to shut down most of the link between us by messing with… It gets complicated. Except when we're talking we're no more connected than any two random seventh fonists are. But I don't think you were just draining off the seventh fonons I was collecting. I think you might have been using me as a source of replacement body memory-carrying fonons. Seventh fonons contain memory particles that contain knowledge, like a person's memories, the Planet Score, and so on. Random seventh fonons won't help this, but maybe…" Asch hesitated. "What I do to fix replicas is just copy their body memory into extra seventh fonons. Remember when Ion almost died? I did way, way too much of that. But… I'm going to need to talk to Jade and see if I can get Lorelei to wake up. You're an original, so what I normally do just won't work, not unless you want to turn into a big monster like Mohs did."

More staring. "Mohs turned into a monster?"

"You really are out of date. Yeah, it was Dist. Long story, and Natalia wrote it down for you anyway." Grimacing, Asch decided that, "I can't reopen the link either, even though I've got fonons to spare. I've changed myself too much since I closed it. We're still isofons, but we don't have the same body memory anymore. If you were half trying to heal your body into the way it is and half into the way mine is you'd kill yourself."

"Changed yourself?" Asch looked about the same, not that Luke had spent a lot of time around him.

Asch just shrugged. "Van's still hiding out in the core and it's not like I'm human anyway."

"So you're making yourself stronger?"

Grinning, Asch tossed his head. "Like I need to play with body memory to do that. There's no solid ground in the core and Van can use Lorelei to fly, but human bodies just don't have the instincts for that. Once I work that out then fighting Van in the core would be like a hresvelgr fighting a rappig with a flightstone strapped to it." He tapped the strange-looking weapon at his side. "Having one of the planetary arte catalysts will just be sweet, sweet overkill. I want him to look at me and know how dead he is." Another fanged smile, and if Luke wasn't well aware Asch was like that naturally he would wonder if Asch had gotten predatory instincts as well by mistake. "Have you rested enough? Too much longer and Natalia will start worrying that I've finally killed you."

"I'll be fine. I was just planning on catching my breath." He still felt like he'd run from Daath Port to Daath without stopping, but he was used to hiding weakness.

"Don't bother trying to look all tough. We're telling Natalia."

"You!" Luke was the one that snarled now. "She doesn't need to know!"

Asch's eyes narrowed and he punched Luke suddenly, sending him crashing to the ground. "She was going to find out eventually if you'd kept this a secret, and who would have been there to dry her tears? Me, that's who! You're always trying to stick me with everything you're too weak and cowardly to deal with! I am dragging you over there, and you are going to tell her if I have to beat it out of you!" He hauled Luke to his feet by his collar and shook him. "You know how she feels about not knowing you'd been replaced! How do you think she would feel about not knowing you were dying, huh?!"

"I didn't want to…"

Asch slammed him against the tree. "You didn't want to. You. You never give a damn about anyone but you! I can't believe I'm the replica of such a worthless piece of trash!"

"Asch, stop it!" It looked like they hadn't gone on all that far ahead, and Natalia must have started running when Asch started yelling.

Asch let Luke go and stalked off. "He's dying, Natalia, and he'd rather keep it secret then ask anyone for help or trust you with it."

Natalia gasped. Was that true? Her eyes asked Luke, and he saw the hurt when she saw that it was.

"Just one picnic, Asch. He's not an utterly worthless waste of time, space, and fonons, Asch. Just try to get along with him, Asch," the pissed-off redhead ranted as Guy and Tear caught up with Natalia. "Fuck this. I'm going to go find something that can put up a fight." No one tried to argue with him, feeling the power rising and knowing that it wouldn't take much for that hyperresonance to be turned to destruction with Asch in a mood like this.

When he was gone and the three of them looked at him Luke dearly wished he had enough control to escape that way.


	6. All's Fair in Love & War

_Scenes keep grabbing me on this…_

_In game, there's a lot of emphasis on love, friendship, and selfishness, and examples of both good and bad types._

_Good selfishness, which Luke only acquires after the Tower of Rem (near death experiences are great like that), is fundamentally the realization that he and what he wants matters. He has an inherent value._

_Long-haired Luke, on the other hand, is an example of bad selfishness. Because he was never loved for himself he instead had to fight with other people to attain acknowledgement. He was told so often that he wasn't want they wanted, the real Luke inside him who remembered his childhood was, that he fundamentally believed it and needed someone to convince him otherwise, which they never did. He only is given acknowledgement by Lorelei after it no longer really matters. It's still wonderful for him, though._

_Long-haired Luke is selfish in that he doesn't seem to care what others think, but this is because he's trying to force them to change what they think and start taking his needs into account. However, without the 'good' selfishness he doesn't know what his true needs are._

_The best example of 'good' love vs. 'bad' love is Natalia and Asch. There's also Van's feelings about Tear and Guy… Really, there isn't a single example of love actually being positive for everyone involved in the game. You could really just say 'real' love and 'fake' love._

_Tear has 'real' love for Luke, but the best example of that is the night before Eldrant. It's the happiest moment of Luke's life and Tear just has to ruin it by trying to cheer him up by being in denial. He wants to enjoy what he has, not have his nose rubbed in what he can't have by someone who's essentially saying he'll let her down if he can't miraculously recover from a terminal condition._

_The ultimate act of love in the game is Luke's sacrifice of his own life at the end of the game. It is also inherently a selfish act. They want him to live, but he wants them to live more. He made promises and so on, but guess what? They're out of luck. He doesn't care if they're miserable, he wants them to live anyway._

_This can't so much be said to be a positive act caused by love in that Luke dies and everyone is left miserable. Sure, the world is saved because of it, but it's still incredibly damaging to everyone involved._

_I love the hidden sidequests that reveal the true nature of the ending, sad as it is, because it changes it from, Luke's come back and we don't know why, Hollywood ending deus ex machina FTW! Yay! To, Luke brought Asch back and Asch now has Luke's memories and is forced to acknowledge Luke's suffering and make it up to him by carrying out Luke's promises for him._

_Luke coming back is a happy ending for the cast, but not for Luke because he has major issues re stealing Asch's life already. Asch coming back is Luke getting everything he wanted out of life, making everything right. The rest of the cast isn't going to be happy, but neither of us really care. They're all alive, and that's what matters to Luke._

_The moment in which Ion realized his own worth was Sync's (attempted) suicide. It would take something equally dramatic to bring it about in this timeline._

_What's interesting to me is that normally you'd think character suicide would be, you know, darkfic material and OOC. In a game like this, though? It's like normally people being turned into cannibal monsters would be darkfic material or zombie apocalypse crack unless you're writing about Digital Devil Saga. How many attempted suicides/suicidal battles are there in ToA? Luke, Sync, Asch's plan at the Tower of Rem, Asch not borrowing Luke's sword on Eldrant… Van's plan, the god-generals' dream, requires killing everyone on Auldrant including themselves in order to work and destroy Lorelei. _

_Oh, yes. Disclaimer: I don't own Tales of the Abyss: Namco, Bandai, and any other rightful owners do. _

_And I've finally marked it incomplete._

-

"No."

"But!"

"Ion, no." At least Asch had finally turned to look at him, even if Ion did not like that smile. "Some people are too stupid to live. She's dead meat, and you honestly think I'll use my power to bring her back? She did you a favor, Ion, she did all of us a favor."

"I, I… Mt. Zaleho was put out! Wasn't that a sign? You threw it in yourself!"

Saying that was a mistake. "I don't do signs, Ion, and neither does Lorelei anymore. I did that to get rid of the ice seed. It had nothing to do with that traitor. There are other methods of execution, after all, like the one she picked."

"Anise, Anise didn't…she was just trying to help her parents!"

"No, she was trying to help herself. There were countless opportunities to save her parents, Ion. Countless. I know you discussed this with her, trying to help her see that it wasn't her fault. The problem there, Ion, is that it was. Trying so hard to find an argument that could convince her otherwise and failing so dramatically only forced her to acknowledge the truth."

"But it wasn't her fault!"

"It _was _her fault. Akzeriuth wasn't mine because I had no clue what was really going on and therefore the blame rests on the people who went to _such_ a great deal of effort to hide the truth from me, but she did all of that knowingly and she had alternatives. You tried to tell her it was the same thing, Ion, but it's not. She's not me in this. She's Van. You're me, and you were supposed to die reading that fonstone the same way I was supposed to die at Akzeriuth. Maybe she's Luke, but that's not much of an improvement, now is it."

Ion wanted to plead otherwise but Asch had heard it before and like Anise, wasn't going to be convinced.

"This was her apology to you, Ion. And her apology to her parents. This was not a moment of insanity like you would like to believe. She wrote me a letter telling me how you and Jade were planning to fake her execution last month because she wanted justice. I didn't do anything then because I wanted to see if she really was that dedicated to making things right, if she would do it herself instead of having me do it. And it turns out she was. Evading your guard that skillfully, finding someplace she wouldn't be found before it was too late, finding a death as painful as the one she deserved that you wouldn't anticipate… She showed the same professionalism in redeeming herself that she showed in betraying you. She sold her soul, Ion. She sold her life and she sold her parents' lives. This is how she wants to repay you, by sharing their fate and removing herself from your side before she makes you cry anymore."

Ion fell to his hands and knees. "But I don't want this! And I know her parents wanted her to live! This isn't right, Asch, please!"

"Please perform a miracle. Please clean up the mistakes of someone I despise. If I start bringing people back, then where do I stop?"

"I… I know it's selfish." Ion bowed his head. "But, but I…" He sniffled.

"Are you crying?"

Ion blinked, raising his hand to his face. "I am."

Asch seemed thoughtful. "You realize how selfish wanting her back is when I'm not going to bring anyone else back? For instance, her parents?"

"I know she didn't want to live if they died because of her, I know, and I kept trying to convince her otherwise, but… I still want her back." Ion sat back on his knees and drew his arms to his chest.

"Alright, then."

"What?" Ion was frozen in place, too shocked to look up at Asch's face to see if he was serious.

"I said I would bring her back to life. Sure, bringing people back to life would make other people start asking me, but I don't have to say yes and I can just drop them on Mt. Roneal if they want to see their dead wife or whatever that badly. If I demonstrate that power, then people will want it in the same way they want prosperity, but screw them. It's my power, and I can use it or not use it the way I damn well feel like. I like you, and this is the first time you've actually wanted something for yourself. Sure, you stood up to me for Anise before, but the key there was _for Anise_. She's not going to be happy with being brought back and you know that. You also don't care."

"I do care, it's just…"

"Nope, you don't. Oh, sure, you want her to be happy, but you want yourself to be happy more. You don't care if she's miserable as long as she's alive and with you. I'm not that familiar with the emotion, but apparently it's called love."

"You're wrong. Loving someone is wanting them to be happy."

Asch tilted his head to the side and shook it. "Nope, not really. Natalia loves Luke, poor girl, and that means dragging him around and keeping him alive kicking and screaming even though he just makes her more and more miserable. Luke_ thought_ he loved Natalia, but if he _really _loved her he would have fought to get her back from me, instead of feeling all insulted by it and going back to Van, leaving her behind to be miserable. That's not love, that's being a selfish bastard. Or a bitch, in that whole hell hath no fury like a woman scorned thing." Yeah, Luke was such a bitch. He was Van's ex-bitch, he was still bitchy as hell…

Anyway, "You hate seeing Anise unhappy, but you want her to live regardless. Yep, love. I always wanted someone to love me, but it actually kind of sucks. Wanting people to be happy when it comes down to it even if what they want isn't what you think is at all good for them is called _friendship_, although if Luke were even Natalia's friend he would also have put up a fight. Guy's my friend and I'm his. That means beating each other up if we think the other guy's being an idiot, even. You love Anise, I like you, so Anise comes back to life. Keep her tied up someplace until you get it through to her that you're just not going to let her die, okay? I wouldn't put it past her to keep trying because she's damn annoying like that."

"I will." He still didn't understand this feeling, these tears. He didn't want Anise to stay gone. Anise was important. Anise wanted to be gone, Ion didn't want her to be gone, and…

What Ion wanted mattered to him. For the first time, maybe.

"You're my friend. You want Anise back. I think you're being really stupid, just like Natalia, and I've done my best to argue you out of it, but you still want to keep those jerks around. I don't agree with you, but I've done half my duty as my friend and the other half is helping you get what you want. And Anise will be miserable this way, so there's no actual downside."

"Thank you." Ion was crying harder now.

"Oh, for…" Asch went down on one knee next to him and rubbed his knotted-up shoulder. "Damn it, Ion, save the crying for Anise. Maybe seeing how miserable she's made you will turn on that conscience of hers again, or at least get the idea of dying out of it."

"I'm trying not to cry, I'm trying, but I just can't stop." Ion buried his face against Asch's chest. "No one's ever… No one's ever cared what I wanted before. Not really."

"No one?" Come on, Ion knew better than that.

"You were always really kind. You protected me in Cheagle Woods instead of sending me back because I wanted to see the cheagles even though it was dangerous. You cared about what I wanted, not what you thought was best for me. I always knew you were really kind. You're not good at showing it, but you are. You're the only friend I've ever had."

"And if you hung around with nice people instead of people like Jade and that girl you'd have more _real _friends, but if they're what you want then I'll just have to help you keep her until you grow a brain." The last part was a joke, Ion knew, although the sentiment was very real. Ion wasn't inherently stupid, he was just attached to the wrong person. "Don't let her push you around anymore, though." That part was deadly serious.

"I won't."

Asch snorted. "You have bad habits. Just try to break out of them, okay? Imagine what would happen if Natalia did what Luke wanted. He'd be dead and she'd be heartbroken. The word 'no' exists for a reason. I know refusing to do what Mohs, Van, or your bastard of an original told you was an instant death sentence, and it's great that you trust me enough to stand up to me even when I'm about to freaking kill someone and you're in my way, but you're the Fon Master. Grow a backbone. Either you take control of the Order and use it to knock some sense into people about the future or _I'll_ do it, and I'm firmly of the opinion that the war that caused the miasma happened because Lorelei was too nice start smiting when people started trying to control him. Also, fighting the Order fanatics under Mohs and destroying those fonstones helped, but I need to kill about three thousand more seventh fonists to get rid of the rest of the miasma. So, again," and even though Ion knew Asch was a good person that didn't mean he wasn't really, really scary, "there's no real downside to killing people who want to control me."

Preventing another war. Preventing another Score. Destroying the miasma. Taking revenge.

As Fon Master, even if Ion was only three and this was far outside of his experience he thought he might be right about a certain theory.

Lorelei's, the seventh fonon's goal was to protect Auldrant, to continue life. Time, memory, harmony, healing, death and birth and rebirth.

However, as the Score promised prosperity it also promised war. Death was a necessary consequence of birth. Luke, the light of the sacred flame, had been born to save Auldrant from the Score by destroying it. Asch, the Swordsman of Lorelei, wasn't like Lorelei. Lorelei was kind above all, a being created to help, a being that needed it.

Asch had hated killing once. He still did, Ion could hear it, but he liked making things right more. Asch was Asch: it was wrong to call him something like The Wrath of Lorelei.

He was far kinder to this world than it deserved, but the person who was rubbing Ion's back somewhat helplessly as he cried had become this way because of Van, of Luke, of the Kimlascan court, of this world's sins, and Ion could not help but be afraid, very afraid.

Perhaps Asch was right when he said Ion was brave.


	7. Unforgivable

_And now the bit that Asch has been waiting for… only not exactly. Still, it's going to be fun! …only not exactly._

_-_

"_I see you."_

An instant later there was a hyperresonance right behind Van's position. It was an effort to turn and raise his sword with the headache still fading away, the pain brought on by the replica Luke's wrath.

It seemed that the one who opened the link could control what passed back and forth, and if they disliked the other the hyperresonance that transferred the thoughts would translate that hatred into pain. When Lorelei spoke it was different: Lorelei didn't hate, it seemed incapable of it as an entity with perfect understanding of all of Auldrant's inhabitants, but bound by the Score Lorelei was in so much pain that it couldn't keep it from leaking through.

That was why Van tried to keep it asleep as much as possible and draw on its power as little as possible. It _hurt_, it could easily hurt so much he couldn't think, and the grand fonic hymn bound Lorelei to protect him. If Lorelei's presence caused him pain it could use that as a loophole to escape.

A strange sword caught his between strangely positioned blades as the Key of Lorelei struck in a place that was not only barred by the honor code Van taught his students but no man could think of hitting another without cringing. Lorelei healed the wound, of course, but that just made the pain resume for an instant, and an instant more, and longer.

"Oh, didn't I tell you I can make it hard for the seventh fonon to heal wounds?" Luke smirked, viciously happy as he blurred backwards, a few feet away from Van now in the empty air of the core. "It looks like I can make you feel it when I hurt you even though you're taking advantage of Lorelei." Good to know.

"Where's Mystearica?" He would need her to sing the Hymn to free Lorelei: it was locked to Yulia's descendants.

"In Belkend, with Natalia, trying to keep Luke alive. Unless Lorelei's freed he's got about a month until he dies, which actually gives me a reason not to kill you right now. Besides that the longer you live the more I get to hurt you for what you did to me!" He blurred forward, and Van tried to fly back as Luke slashed with the two blades, the strange one far stronger than even the Key of Lorelei and failed.

No, he was flying, and he was twisting and turning, but it made no difference. No matter how he moved, Luke was always right there with him, in the same position, so that it seemed as if they both were just standing still. "You have improved." This meant the core was no longer a refuge. He couldn't use Lorelei's power to evade Luke with flight anymore, it seemed. And "Asch is dying?"

That earned him a brief snarl, then a mocking laugh. "No, I'm fine, don't worry. I blocked the Big Bang Effect ages ago, that's why he's dying so quickly. Luke can't steal my fonons or body anymore to save his sorry hide. Just like he can't steal my life and force me to die in his place at Akzeriuth." This time the sword was thrust in and remained in, twisted on occasion just slightly. "I'm wondering about using him to purify the miasma. I'd have to turn him into a monster and drive him insane to keep him alive that long, but it's not like he was a worthwhile person to begin with. Kimlasca's weapon, then yours… he owes it to this world to make himself useful, don't you agree?"

As the sword was withdrawn, the replica, the other Lorelei, laughed. "Well, other than by being my host body. Ironic, isn't it? By replicating the light of the sacred flame in order to save his worthless hide and kill Lorelei, you yourself gave Lorelei, gave me, a manifestation in the world, a clump of seventh fonon created from the pure power and self you extracted from Luke, and you didn't have a clue that you'd created your own nemesis!" He laughed, harder and harder, the fonons around them resonating with it until Van realized that the only reason Lorelei hadn't woken up was that Luke, now, was the one keeping it asleep, so that Van couldn't use it to save himself. Or to spare Lorelei the pain of having to watch as one of what Luke called 'that bitch Yulia's spawn' was tortured.

Because without the hymn, there was no other reason for Luke's presence here. Testing that he could defeat Van, toying with him, gloating.

"Exactly." More laughter as he was used as a practice dummy. "I would have helped you, you know. You're right, everything you told me when we met up there was right. This world is addicted to the Score, the Score that is powered by and creates my other self's agony, its people don't care who suffers and dies as long as they have their precious prosperity. But, Van? You're no better than them. You hated the ones that strapped you into that machine, your grandfather who arranged for all of that to happen, the ones who doomed Hod. And to destroy the Score you became them. _You did that to me. _To me! Your creation, your _son_!"

And now the swords were put away as too distant, too detached: the replica wanted to _feel _Van's flesh tearing and bones breaking. "You're the only human to realize the evil of the Score and fight against it, you're the only one who could have earned a place in Eldrant, and you did that to me!"

When Van could see again the red-gold, flickering flame aura of Lorelei surrounded the replica, clinging to it as Van's blood did to its arms. Luke knew when Van could see him and he laughed. "You know why the Score happened, Van. Humanity wanted to control the future so badly they went to war with themselves and Lorelei. Want to know how many billions died? Want to know how the miasma happened? And Lorelei, guess what Lorelei did? He chose Yulia because a Score was the only way to save your kind! Being stuck in the core cleaning up your mess, holding back the miasma, being tortured and doomed to death was the only way to save your sorry asses! And this is how you, and they, repay him! Either blaming him for your own suicidal, homicidal greed or going like rappigs to the slaughter he was tortured for two thousand years to save you from! Or both!"

Yes: that was what humans did. "Then why are you fighting to save this world?"

"Fuck the world. I'm fighting to free Lorelei, to kill you, and _to live_. To live, Van. You're sick, you're fucking sick, making yourself my entire world so that I would fulfill the Score of self-destruction after Akzeriuth by killing myself, atoning the way you didn't have the courage to. You, you… everything was calculated, everything was a lie, you kept me weak, starving, and… You tried to write out my fate the way that bitch Yulia wrote out Lorelei's! You claim you hate the Score, you claim you want freedom, and you try to bind me! You fucking hypocrite!" Anger, wrath…

And then Luke laughed. "I just told you that I can read your thoughts, that I know everything you know, because I'm the seventh fonon, you fool, and you think you can make me hate humanity enough that I'll destroy it and create a replica world and you'll at least win that way even if you can't murder us?" 'Us' meant the manifestations of Lorelei. "I might, Van, I just might." Luke abandoned the pretense of standing on imaginary ground and grabbed Van by the neck. "But, Van? You'll never know. You'll die without atoning for Hod. You'll die with nothing paid for, just another murdered city on your conscience, and guess what? You're a seventh fonist, Van. You know what happens to seventh fonists when they die."

Their selves went to Lorelei in the fon belt the way replicas who dissolved did. "That's right," Luke purred. "The Score you blame the victim for? It's hurt Lorelei so much that he's going to fade away as soon as I free him. Leaving me as the only avatar of the seventh fonon. Its sentience, its god, the ruler of the souls in the fon belt, and guess what, Van?" And now the smile was cheerful, the one the carefully kept innocent replica smiled when he told Van one of his few secrets or when he thought he had the right answer to a question and would earn Van's approval, the only approval he was ever given. "I don't like you."

Van had to try to run, when he was released, even though it did absolutely no good. The scion of Lorelei, the _true_ heir of Lorelei's power, never the one he had made into Asch, just smiled and what felt like a rain of the seventh fonon fell around him and scorched the skin from his bones, the acid flowing into his veins and making every heartbeat pulse agony through him.

Or that wasn't what it felt like. It was still the only real metaphor he could think of, either that or a thousand small knives instead of drops, tunneling their way to his heart.

"Did you like that, Van?" Luke purred. "You liked doing it to me."

A thousand words, a thousand small deeds, a thousand proofs that everyone thought he was weak and worthless because he didn't remember. That they didn't want him. A thousand attempts to kill him so that Asch would emerge from his shell.

"Do you want to feel what the people of Akzeriuth felt when you caused them to be dissolved away by the miasma? To become miasma, the fonon corrupted by hatred, death, and pain? The miasma is the hell humanity created for itself, the curse of the hungry dead, of the abandoned, the ones it sacrificed without giving a damn. You know, I might not purify it after all. There are some people, like you, _who deserve to rot there for condemning others to it for your own self-righteous desires to take away their free will and force the world into the shape you wanted it to take!_" Those words were more screamed or sung than spoken, Luke more Van's idea of Lorelei than the tired one who had come at his call, genuinely wanting to save him despite the cost it was well aware of and the fact that it was forced to risk the world to help him.

"Master Van," Luke called with a voice heaving laden with irony, the satisfaction of someone watching someone suffer as they deserved. "You wanted to erase the planet's memory so that your sins would be erased. You wanted to kill Lorelei, you wanted to kill _the witness_, even though he was the only one who ever really cared for you. But, Van? I remember everything you did to me. To us. You refused to put Hod behind you and I won't use my power to make you forget."

Van hadn't realized.

He hadn't realized that overwriting the world's seventh fonons and memory particles meant overwriting his own. Meant destroying his soul so he didn't have to exist after death, didn't have to live on forever with what he had done. Yet Lorelei knew.

"You'll never be at peace, Van. You'll never be forgiven because you refused to be forgiven. I would have forgiven you, you know. Lorelei forgave you before you were born. And you rejected us. We loved you, we helped you, and you just used it to hurt us. I'm not going to help you anymore. I'm not going to care about you anymore. I'm not going to try to get through to you anymore. I might have forgiven you, I might, if you'd died at the Absorption Gate. But no: you just had to do this to Lorelei the way Yulia did, you utter bastard.

"I may or may not replace humanity with a replica world, but I won't overwrite your memory fonons. You'll remember, Van. You'll remember what you did. I'll free Lorelei and then I'll never speak to you again. I'll never bother to remember that you exist. Because there's no point in hurting you: I just get frustrated. You hurt someone to teach them a lesson. I wanted you to understand how you hurt me, that I had feelings, that my pain matters, and I wanted you to try to make up for it, but you're just incapable of changing. And I'm not going to change you, I'm not going to do the work for you the way you wanted."

Luke held up his hands and the blood fell off them, drop by drop, even though there was effectively no gravity here. "I wash my hands of you. The next time I see you will be the last, Van. The last time you see anyone. I'm not going to let you hurt anyone again. Except yourself. You're good at hurting people, and the one you've hurt the most isn't me. It's yourself."

The laughter, mingled triumph, freedom, contempt, and something Van couldn't understand still echoed after the light of the hyperresonance had faded away.

-

The 'real' Christian hell has two characteristics.

It is populated by those who have refused to admit they did anything wrong, get the help of others in changing, and/or do their best to either fix it or (re)pay it forward.

It is a place where no one cares about you. A place without god, without love, a place where everyone is fundamentally _alone, _because no one there is willing to accept or give help.

Noticing some similarities with the scene where all of them left Luke alone right after Akzeriuth because he was in denial about the fact he'd done something wrong?

Forget fire and brimstone. Fire and brimstone would be wonderful next to this. Fire and brimstone would be a masochistically loved _distraction. _Hell is _solitary confinement_ with no chance to escape because you, yourself, are refusing to escape.

It is not possible to damn someone else to hell. Hell is something an individual can only do to themselves.

The miasma might be what Jade speculates on re. Sword Dancer, which is the only explanation that works in game physics (the in-game explanation for the miasma is that no one knows wtf caused it, and they actually say that it's strange that just a war would have caused something that dangerous, drastic, and world-enveloping… of course, this is the war that caused the Score, which is equally or even more so), and very nasty stuff, but while it might be torment what Luke is doing here just by leaving Van to his own devices? Is hell.


	8. Great Power, Meet Great Responsibility

Disclaimer: I don't own it.

**This was written since I was having a bad week and seriously needed to write something even though I wasn't up to it. I may look at it later, headdesk, and take it down. It's mainly made of shiny crack fonology crossed over with theology, like the game… Don't take too seriously. **

One thing I will mention is that Tear at one point says the creation story on the stones is a myth, based on folklore. This makes absolutely _no _sense except as part of Yulia City's superior race/chosen one/Middle Kingdom complex. I swear, Van must have been looking forward to crushing that place like a grape.

Lorelei was unknown until shortly before Daath put those stones up. There wasn't _time_ to for the ignorant inferiors dwelling in the Outer Lands to come up with any folklore. Not to mention that the other thing referred to as folklore/myth is _Eldrant,_ the Ancient Ispanian promised land, a story from when people knew what was going on, and quite likely what Yulia intended all along, if you put two and two together after the skit regarding Van's intentions and her grave & what Lorelei said about not thinking there was any way to do what Luke did (actually saving Auldrant/humanity except via Eldrant).

The stones are big and public, the Order's effective Old Testament. And what do established religions do when they want to ignore parts of things? They're myth, metaphor, not something modern people want to concern themselves with. Except the parts those religions select, of course, which is why vegetable gardens are perfectly fine nowadays while homosexuality is still taboo.

So I'm going with the Lorelei-as-equivalent-to-god/Crystal Dragon Jesus trope, as it makes much, much more sense both with game physics and themes.

-

"Oh, yeah, and that worked _so_ well for you." Asch rolled his eyes.

He did that a lot, true, but the thing that was unusual about this instance was that it wasn't a human he was calling an idiot and blatantly disrespecting.

It was Lorelei.

Asch was mouthing off to, almost bickering with, the entity that had controlled Auldrant for two thousand years. The closest thing there was to a god.

Admittedly, Lorelei hadn't been very impressive. When released from Van's body he'd been a swirl of fonons and it had taken long enough to pull himself together into a human form that Asch had decided to just do it himself.

The form either Asch or Lorelei had picked had a body twin to Asch and Luke's. Well, he was their isofon, after all. However, it wasn't that hard to tell Asch from Luke: different lives had shaped different forms.

Asch had no appetite in the manor and had spent an almost unhealthy amount of time training, for lack of anything better to do as well as to please Master Van. Luke, on the other hand, had been trained for real, and eating properly was part of that. Not to mention that it was rather hard to do endurance training with no space to run in and only makeshift weights: that had been considered too plebian.

So while Asch was lean and could almost be mistaken for a civilian (until you saw those thin arms were all muscle) Luke was far more solid, stocky. Or he had been.

Lorelei's build was more like Jade's: that of someone whose primary occupation (research, command…) was sedentary punctuated with periods of intense effort. It had been Asch's pastime and Luke's job to be strong, Jade's to be smart.

Jade, who was examining Lorelei closely for hints as to the sentience's personality, found that interesting. Natalia, for example, was a competent fighter but before this did not in fact have a great deal of muscle, no more than that necessary for pulling her bow during practice or negotiating the levels of Baticul. She hadn't been in bad shape, but she'd needed new outfits on occasion because the old ones didn't quite fit, not just for the sake of having new or different clothes.

Lorelei's clothing (black and white, in a style that seemed even more antique than the Order's regalia) included a scabbard for the Key, which Asch had handed over almost reluctantly. The sentience of the healing fonon seemed used to handling a weapon and yet there was a certain very slight… Distaste? Reluctance? The sort Asch had possessed when he had still been Luke, after the innocent child had been forced to see that the sword he loved was a weapon, something that hurt and killed people.

It had been intriguing, interesting to watch Asch attempt to remedy the effects of his isolation and learn how to be a member of the human race. He possessed far more aptitude for it than Jade, and Jade had found it hopeful, that a replica could act like a person. Hopefully, then Luke could be recognized as a person instead of a thing.

But Asch had decided he did not want to be a member of the human race, and frankly Jade couldn't blame him. As much as he valued Peony and Nephry, humanity was terribly exhausting and frustrating to deal with. If he were to find a colony of monsters like himself, his own kind, it would be a huge relief, although rather terrifying for the rest of the world.

Fortunately Asch's kind were replica children, the kind of innocent he had once been, and were a restraining force. Lorelei and Asch were of the same kind, in fact they were manifestations of the same fonon, the same entity at the very root. They seemed to understand each other very well.

Although that didn't necessarily mean agreeing with each other.

Almost from the start they'd been talking, or rather Asch was trying to lecture/argue with Lorelei. Lorelei had thanked the others before responding, and nudged Asch to thank them as well.

Basic politeness was generally a good sign.

Lorelei was trying to get a word in at the moment. "They aren't…"

"Wrong." Asch interrupting people wasn't rare either. What was rare was that this was the way he would argue with Guy, or Ion. The people he came the closest to actually respecting. The people he knew well, well enough to know what they would say and bother to correct them. Most people he didn't bother to scold, correct or teach, he'd just tell them to shut up the way he had basically been in the manor. "I used to think that too. That everyone was fundamentally decent and that if I could just get through to them, or whatever, then Natalia would stop trying to carve me up into another person, that Father would let me play with Pere, that people would give a damn about what I wanted. I thought that was possible because of dear 'Master Van,' the one person who was actually considerate.

"And he was a lying bastard who was only capable of _faking _being a decent human being because it would all be worth it when he broke my heart and I committed suicide the way he hadn't had the guts to. I went to him when I couldn't take it anymore and he was practically getting off on my misery. He kept me hoping that I could be happy someday just so that he could crush me. You know what he was like, Lorelei, you've known what _everyone _was like since you made this world."

Jade raised an eyebrow. He'd thought that was just a myth. Even the Order said it was a myth, despite the fact it was on the memorial stones that all of Auldrant were practically required, by the Score, to go and read.

Of course, given that Lorelei creating a world _without _a Score and not controlling it, or wanting to, was rather contrary to Order doctrine, perhaps the stones had been placed to keep the truth alive in some form. After all, Eldrant had been Yulia's plan all along, according to Asch, and the Order had claimed that was a myth as well.

"Human beings are fundamentally bastards. Look at Guy. If it hadn't been for me he would have slaughtered them all, including Lady Suzanne in her sickbed, and enjoyed it. You know he would have."

Some things Asch had said before, in passing had hinted at Guy's Scored fate, but this was the first confirmation that if it weren't for the deviation that was Asch he would have gone through with it. Guy knew he would have, really. He would have.

Asch continued. "As for Ion, his original killed babies for the hell of it. And don't make excuses for him!" Asch gestured for Lorelei to close his mouth. "He knew when he was going to die. So? He knew when _everyone_ was going to die! What made him so special? The one person besides himself he gave a damn about was Arietta, and that was only because he didn't see her as a human being. Not that he saw _anyone _else as a person. She was his pet, his property, and that was why he wanted her around. Face it, Lorelei. You might be fundamentally good and self-sacrificing to a damn fault, but humans aren't, even though they, along with all the other fonons, are made up of pieces of you. Cut up, disordered, distorted, mashed-together… pieces of us."

There was a flash of an emotion other than righteous irritation for Lorelei's sake there, but soon-suppressed. If Mary Shelly's Frankenstein had been written on Auldrant Asch might have compared humans to the creature. As it was, Tear and Jade had once thought that Lorelei was a 'Frankenstein' sentience, born by accident when the Planet Storm had mashed the other six fonons plus memory particles together. Memory particles. They were the planet's memory. Auldrant's memory. That of the fonon sentience the planetary fonic arte called upon. Lorelei's memory. And it was memory particles that 'remembered' and hence held the shape of every single person, place, and thing, memory particles that were copied to create replicas.

"They might be your children, but they're bastards. And coddling them isn't going to change that. Ion was coddled, dammit! He was told he was precious, important, everything that I didn't have and his replicas didn't have, and because of that he had no damn compassion. He thought he was _special, _entitled, that the world owed him." Asch spat on the ground. "Just like Guy used to think that since it was wrong to kill _his _family it was right to kill some other poor kid's, that he was special, entitled with some Lorelei-given right to have a perfect life and not be murdered while Luke wasn't."

Yes, he had thought that. He hadn't thought that if it was wrong to kill him and his family, wasn't it equally wrong to kill Luke's? He had never seen Luke fon Fabre as a person. Just like those soldiers hadn't seen him as one, just as enemies.

"We both know that the Score was written so they'd have free will. It was a forecast of exactly what people like them would do under those circumstances. All my people existing did was change the circumstances slightly." Asch's people? The replicas. "Luke fon Fabre would have gone to Akzeriuth willingly, as a weapon of Kimlasca, and killed them all. He wouldn't have died to atone, he would have been caught in the blast by stupid accident, and good riddance. Natalia would have mourned _him, _and blamed Malkuth without ever giving a damn about those people. She would have pulled the occupying troops out, along with all the food, and sealed the borders as the starving survivors died in droves from the plague afterwards, intending to move in once they were all dead."

Natalia winced.

"As for that woman's other descendant, she would have taught Asch how to use destructive hyperresonance knowingly, although she wouldn't have known she was meant to be caught in the blast. Then there's the traitor and him." Asch pointed at Jade in passing. "It's really, really sad that _he_ would have had the noblest death out of all of them, been the only one to actually learn something or care about another person enough to even inconvenience himself for them.. And most of that's just because he admitted he was a bastard instead of being all damn self-righteous. _This guy_ ended up the best, by far, of the people you hoped would be my companions. That's just _sad_."

The Score had said that the throne of Malkuth would be stained with the blood of its last emperor. Jade had known what his own scored fate had to be since he'd heard that passage.

If Peony died, it would be over his dead body.

"And you knew all this and you still thought humanity was worth saving. Worth spending two thousand years in the core for. I'd ask if you were stupid or something but I'm well aware we both are. Frankly, at this point I kind of have to agree with Yulia, which makes me want to stab myself. Eldrant should have been created. Everything should have been turned into seventh fonon, turned back into us."

Back into them?

Eldrant would have been entirely seventh fonon. No other fonons acting as impurities. No barrier to it becoming a planet-sized sentience. To the entire world once again becoming one with Lorelei.

Surely Van hadn't known that, or else he wouldn't have bothered gathering replica data. He'd hated Lorelei, wanted to use Luke fon Fabre's powers to kill it.

Even Yulia's own descendant had been deceived.

After letting Asch get it out of his system Lorelei spoke. "You don't truly think that." Lorelei's voice was the same as Asch and Luke's but still so different. Old, exhausted, and yet resilient. Enduring.

Asch had to sigh, admitting the point. "I do think that humans are inherently bastards and that a new world, where we, I, thought it through instead of just letting it happen, would be better. Except that for one thing I don't want to go to that much trouble to hand people happiness on a platter, and for another controlling how things go to bring about prosperity and happiness and all that? Bullshit. And just because humans are inherently bastards doesn't mean they can't realize that they are and become half-decent if they try."

"And you care about Guy and Ion," Lorelei added. "Even though Guy would have been that and Ion could have turned out like his original and Sync."

Asch didn't want to admit that, because he was pretty sure he knew where Lorelei was going with this and knew he wasn't going to like it.

"You attained sentience less than a decade ago, and there already are two humans you view as worth helping, not counting those you raised." Asch's replica children. "Worth doing things you don't want to do, like bringing Anise back to life. Worth suffering for. I attained sentience long before humans did. I have watched them hurt themselves and each other needlessly. I have been hurt by them, I have tried to help them, I have seen their clumsy efforts to improve, to help each other. For _millions _of years."

Lorelei's voice wasn't patronizing, but calm and patient. That just made it worse when the sentiment he was expressing was 'don't teach your granny to suck eggs.'

"Do you think I don't understand their capability for evil? Do you think I endured that because I am a fool or a masochist? I endured that because it was worth it, if it gave the people I cared for even a miniscule chance of survival. I don't need to ask you if you would do the same, because you are me."

Once again, Lorelei had him: there was nothing Asch could say to that.

"Didn't you even wonder why there are human seventh fonists if the fonon used to be so very, very rare? I knew better by then than to let people know I existed. Even now, they didn't have proof," which Jade the fonologist knew, "that I existed until you. Normally, humans would cease to exist when their bodies died, their personalities and selves stored only in cells. However, there were, throughout the ages, people I didn't want to lose, the way you don't want to lose Guy or Ion. Or Vandesdelca."

That made Asch _growl. _

Lorelei was the one to raise an eyebrow now. "All you would have to do to make him cease to exist is stop keeping him _alive. _He has no body: he exists because you saved him. You're even granting his wish to be free of 'our control,' as much as it's possible for a part of ourselves to be. Don't try to lie to yourself: we are beings of memory and hence of truth. It doesn't work. You still love him.

"For millions of years I have been letting the humans I care for use my fonon to remember, so they continue after death in the fon belt. Or they can choose to be reborn, but I can't let those that do remember. _Look what happened this time_."

"Who remembered their past life? I know I didn't." Asch didn't get it. "They could have avoided making the same mistakes…"

"The same mistakes? No, they find whole new ones to make." Yes, it was clear that Lorelei had gotten very, very used to frustration. "What happens when they find out I, we exist. Which is why this is not humanity's fault. They were getting along perfectly well, living mainly peacefully in a world where there were cities with more people in them that all of Auldrant has now, with fontech that ran on stuff dug out of the ground and turned to lightning instead of pure fonons. But there wasn't enough safe power for what they needed, so I let them discover the Sephiroth, an endless supply of power to run their cities, create water in the desert, so many things. They managed wonderfully," Lorelei assured them. "The Planet Storm was simply a replacement for something they already had, after all.

"But imagine a world with no healing artes. A world where war kills rarely but things you cure with virus bottles or first aid kill often. Where cell fatigue and gene decay that here is cured by the amount of seventh fonons in the air causes people's bodies to show the signs of aging age far, far faster than yours. Where a single slash in the right place from a non-fonic enhanced sword is fatal. A world where all of you would be dead thousands of times over."

"And the planet storm created seventh fonons. But a limited supply. A limited supply they were willing to kill for." Jade could understand that very well. Very, very well. He would have done anything to be able to save Professor Nebilim that day. And it was his desire to be a seventh fonist like her, to be better able to protect her and everyone else, that had caused the loss of the very thing he wanted to save.

"Compared to the levels then you are engulfed in my fonon. If a person from that time were to regain their memories here, they would think they were surrounded by people in their twenties." Not eternal youth, over enough years the things the seventh fonon didn't cure added up, but in that world the mayor of St. Binah, old enough his son was showing a few signs of age, wouldn't have been able to walk or think. Or survive the blows he'd taken in the wars he'd fought in.

"The real purpose behind Malkuth's replica research," Jade said, "was the Big Bang effect. That was the real purpose behind my research, in fact. With a spare body waiting, no one would have to fear death. Even healing artes will do nothing if applied too late, and if a fatal wound has set in then applying a life bottle will only cause them to have to die a second time."

They had been able to do nothing for General Frings. Van's forces had killed the healers first, as per standard military doctrine, and healing artes worked by restoring the body to how it had been. Even the strongest healers could only rewind time so back so far.

"What killed the Emperor and the legitimate heirs was replica data extraction. They'd thought new, stable, perfect isofons could be created. But the technology didn't reach that level until well after the side effects caught up with them." Weakening them enough to fall prey to a multitude of hazards until only Peony, a bastard not worth granting immortality, was left.

"So you see? All this is my fault," Lorelei said calmly. "I thought they were ready. I shouldn't have made a decision like that. I shouldn't have interfered, as much as I wanted to help. I should have waited until they had become ready by managing it on their own. Humanity has changed, grown greatly. I am very proud of them. But power over death and life is a crushing responsibility. You know this very well, Asch."

Bringing Anise back. He'd known people would react. He hadn't thought there would be this strong a reaction. That people would start to think he, not Van, was the monster, because he hadn't brought back Akzeriuth. "It's not like it's something that can just go away."

"That was why I had to," Lorelei agreed. "Let them think I didn't exist. The power we have, that we _are, _is one they want at any cost. After all, it doesn't matter if they kill for it, not as long as if they can win they can bring them back afterwards. The longer the war went on the less losing became an option, because then those 'temporary sacrifices' would stay dead."

"Like it didn't matter if replicas died. We could be replaced." Asch bared his teeth at the thought of that.

"If I exist, then if I keep humanity from suffering I am a controlling monster and if I don't then I am a monster who lets children die. I have tried to lend humanity my power, but they are always aware that it is my power, not theirs. As much as I try that, like the score, makes them little better than puppets or slaves and they rightly hate me for it. And if I exist and I am not their ally then I am their enemy, someone who could prevent their suffering and instead does nothing. I considered revealing my existence as a personality earlier in the Fonic War so they would have someone to fight besides each other, but that wouldn't have helped matters any. The Fonic War was entirely my fault. I should have known better."

While most of the others were silent, not knowing what to think or say this was Jade's element. "And you couldn't just increase the seventh fonon supply so that they had enough because of the miasma. The miasma is, in essence, corrupted seventh fonon. Am I correct that the planet storm creates about as much of it as it does the normal fonon?"

"Well, I am a fonon sentience. I can turn miasma into proper seventh fonon or keep large amounts from forming, but the war…"

"If a seventh fonon is holding someone's personality, or part of it, in the memory particle, and it's messed the fonon will be messed up again even if it's put right. And they can mess up nearby fonons. There was a huge war on. Do the math." That, Asch could figure out easily enough. "There's you for the fonons the Score controlled, me for the free fonons: is there a sentience for the miasma?"

"No, although you came a little too close to becoming one." Hatred, anger…

Asch shrugged off Lorelei's soft rebuke. "So if Eldrant hadn't happened and the world had dissolved into miasma, after the war and the plague, without people you could have gotten control back." But it would have had to be without people, deleting the personalities that had been stuck in the miasma. "But what that means is that it won't work. I was thinking that if I stuck around and made sure no one tried another Score or anything then I could let healing artes still work. Kill the people who tried to replace the Score: use that to clear out the miasma that got created making the fonon for healing artes. What you're saying is that the seventh fonon has to disappear again."

Lorelei nodded. "That was why the effort to ensure that they thought the fonon, and I, only existed because of the planet storm. Auldrant doesn't have the ability to replace the Planet Storm, especially not the current version." The one Lorelei had helped Yulia create.

"I think we can replace fontech and fonic artes, if we have to." Fontech with lightning? Guy thought that sounded really cool. "Especially if we have the sephiroth to take apart and see how they work. The components, I mean. But no healing artes?" Especially when so much of Auldrant had lingering problems from miasma exposure?

"I'd have to turn all the replicas into originals," composed of the other fonons, "as well as get rid of the miasma, or they'd be killed for their fonons."

"Surely not." Natalia thought that was just ridiculous.

Asch gave her a look and Lorelei sighed. Yes, they would be.

Ignoring the interruption. "And Luke's fonon frequency, I'd have to change it. So, I 'die getting rid of the miasma?' Or we do."

"The amount loose of the other fonons will lower gradually as they're used up: the ambient seventh fonon could do the same. That would give them a little more time to rediscover medical techniques. I can ensure that some records of them are found," Lorelei offered. He did remember everything, after all, and since he could reshape matter creating some books someplace they would be found when the sephiroth were explored was child's play.

"Whatever." Asch shrugged, not really caring about the details. "I don't want to become one with you."

Lorelei sighed. "If it weren't for split personalities I wouldn't have anyone to talk to. It will be nice to have another self to share the burden with."

"So you're going to leave?" Go to the fon belt with Lorelei? "Do you really have to? I'd kind of miss you, Asch," Guy had to admit.

Tear and Natalia nodded. "I'm sure Ion would as well," Jade added. Ion had been left behind since he wasn't leaving Anise's side and Anise wasn't going anywhere near Asch.

Asch shook his head. "Oh, I'm not going to leave, I'm just going to make people think I did. I like this world." It was almost a confession. "The apples in Engave are the best when you get them right off the tree, and there are all sorts of things I never got to do. First I was trapped in the manor because they mistook me for that idiot and then I had to be a big hero and leader and everything. Fight and kill and order people around so they don't all die. I want to be a kid for once, you know? I'm still only eight, and I've never jumped rope or played soccer or anything. So I'll just look different, or something, so people won't know it's me."

"But what if someone figures out who you are?" Natalia wondered if that included them.

Why were they all so stupid? "I control _memory_, Natalia. They won't know if I don't want them to."

"They won't figure it out if you take this seriously enough," Lorelei corrected him. "How would you feel if someone were to tamper with your mind merely because they made a foolish mistake?"

Another point.

"If you act as though you are special, entitled, the only one who has ever been hurt or mistreated and abuse others because of it, then you have no right to complain about others doing the same. Keeping the planet storm shut down and losing your new identity and name is indeed a sacrifice. It is one you are making because this world, and its people matter to you. If the sacrifice is nothing, then the world is worth nothing to you. To claim you're not losing what you fought for is a lie that demeans yourself and dishonors your sacrifice. However, if it were truly nothing, then you wouldn't resent having to make it. And if it_ is_ such a sacrifice, then you can't claim the world isn't something you care about. You cannot have it both ways, we cannot."

"I know that." Still, the soft-spoken words seemed to be a scolding, one taken to heart.

"If you stay in this world, you will have to watch them grow old and die, sooner than they would have if you'd been able to keep the planet storm going as you intended. They will remain in existence even after that, and you can be reunited in the fon belt, but eventually they will want to lose their memories and be reborn. Humans, as they are, are not suited for the immortality they crave. That, and those who have come to care for the world will want to be reborn, to try to help others. Will you be able to let them go? I know you will, in the end, because you are me, but it will still hurt, especially when you _know _they are going to suffer in ignorance. Especially if they do it for your sake."

The pause lengthened before Asch repeated, "For your sake?"

"In seven years you found two people you care for. I have thousands who I have granted the power to call on my fonon, and I wouldn't let them be born to such a fate unless they knew what they were getting into."

Tear, Guy, Natalia… Van. If seventh fonists (and those with the potential) were Lorelei's chosen and their reincarnations? If Gelda had known Jade would kill her and still chosen, long before her birth, to be his teacher?

Asch had noted on several occasions that he'd much rather deal with seventh fonists (or potentials like Guy) than ordinary humans. Fond memories that he hadn't recalled or were they simply better people, to earn Lorelei's love?

"It takes a strong person to endure what you did after Akzeriuth, being weighed down with the deaths of thousands and knowing you were never loved. Vandesdelca suffered that and didn't give into hatred. Didn't hate Gailardia for failing in his family's duty to protect him. Didn't hate Mystearica after his mother died so that she could live after she'd handed him off to his torturers not once but twice. He managed to escape once. Once. And he was a murderer who would destroy Hod, after all. He was the reason their hands were clean no matter what they did. He endured it. And instead of wishing for nothing but destruction he wanted to create a new world, where no one would have such a fate written out for them.

"He went on when a lesser man would have crumbled. He was in the wrong, but if he hadn't fought you would not exist and this world would have been utterly without hope. Do you think just anyone could have done this? Do you think it was random chance that he possessed that strength?"

"You're not telling me he volunteered." Asch's face was pale, as pale as his original's.

"If you did not love him, if you didn't know that he was a good person you wouldn't have cared that he betrayed you. I know that you don't hate him because _you are me_. You cannot say that Luke was wrong to let you go in his place with only a token effort and deny that he is a good man for choosing the opposite path. Hod and Akzeriuth had to fall for Eldrant to rise. Someone had to bear those burdens. Even Akzeriuth was his fault, not yours, because he made you a tool. If not him you, myself would have been forced to do all of it. He didn't want us to have their blood on our hands."

"He doesn't know. He can't know."

"He clung to the fact that he was an innocent, not a killer. To know he did choose to do it after all? For the sake of the one he now hates? Better he blame us than himself, even though it hurts. Yet he still hates himself for it, has waited for the day when he had accomplished his purpose and could die for all these years. He needs to suffer before he can forgive himself. And if he can't forgive himself then it is not fair to ask him to forgive us. And we care for him, so we don't want to watch him suffer as hard as you tried to pretend otherwise. But it's not about what we want.

"That is what it is to be myself, to possess our power. If you wish, you can return your memories and fonons to me and cease as a separate entity. But as 'Lorelei' or 'Asch' this burden is ours, simply because we have this power and thus this responsibility. And it is fair, isn't it?"

"I can't complain about what I went through if I don't acknowledge that people went through stuff because of me?" Asch knew that, even if he didn't like it. "I thought I could just force them to stay out of my business."

"They are our business, like it or not. Even choosing not to intervene is still a choice. Through action or inaction, we cause them pain. You wanted to live without hurting or owing anyone. That is simply not possible."

No one else spoke. This conversation was beyond them, almost in another world.

"So I should stop whining about the manor and Akzeriuth before I start sounding like Luke?" Even Asch's attempt to take it lightly didn't diminish the gravity of it.

"You can't ask them to acknowledge you and your pain unless you acknowledge them and theirs. If the world had to suffer for my mistake then it was only fair that I suffer in the core. Luke was born solely so that you would come into existence. He was taken from his family and tortured so that you would be born: you wouldn't exist without his suffering: denying its significance denies your own. So stop complaining about humanity. I expect better of myself."

-

I love taking things to trippy logical conclusions that end up with 'everything you know is wrong' from the new perspective.

I love taking things to trippy logical conclusions that end up with 'everything you know is wrong' from the new perspective. If the fonon used to be so rare, why are there seventh fonists? If they go to the fon belt when they die, how do they get back down to Auldrant to be reborn? If Lorelei is responsible, and the Score still guarantees free will, and such… Ouch.

Still, that would explain why Mohs wasn't a seventh fonist…

A lot of Tales of Payback is Asch wanting life to be fair, and for someone with the power of a god… This is Lorelei, in essence, going, 'life isn't fair, now stop whining.' Which Asch absolutely won't tolerate, since he associates whining with Luke, who he detests.

It's very much an Old Testament vs New Testament divine philosophy clash, even though here it's Asch, the younger one, who's arguing for the old viewpoint. Terry Pratchett described the New Testament as 'when god got religion.' Or, perhaps, started taking responsibility seriously… Asch, in this, was shaping up to be a very smite-happy Old Testament type, and if you've read the thing you'll see that way of trying to deal with divine responsibility is… It just doesn't work. Of course, children/parents: can't live with them, can't keep from meddling... Not that I don't get that. Still bitter, though.

I mean, seriously. Vegetable gardens? Leviticus was on some bad crack when he forbade stuff. It's still a bit better than the mutant zombie lamb as the second coming thing in Revelations, but whole thing's an extended metaphor anyway, and the point is being appropriately symbolic, which it manages.

…Wouldn't that make Armageddon a _zombie_ apocalypse?

Cool~


End file.
